Animated Atrocities 151/Transcript
Part One There is no name that strikes fear into the heart of animation fans like The Minions. Just look at them: staring at you, laughing at you, polluting your Facebook feed with misspelled philosophical ramblings about nothing! I've made it no secret that I hate The Minions and everything that they've done for animation. And of course, my Patreons have requested that I go after their movie. This should be fun. I suppose I should start with some background about why I hate The Minions themselves. It's easy to call them poorly designed, but that's actually the furthest thing from the truth. The Minions are some of the best designed characters in animation; that's not a good thing! They're well-designed like an advertisement or, say, a cereal box. Their sole focus is in their appeal and how they can stay in the minds of kids for as long as possible. Think about it: The Minions themselves are just ovals with a couple of circles for eyes. This is so simple that even a very young child could draw them. They're also bright yellow, well known for its use in advertising. It's second only to red in how eye-catching it is without the emotions that red often brings. It helps draw attention to them on the movie screen or, I don't know, a toy store. It's no surprise they became the darkhorses of Illumination Pictures, especially with their random non-sequiturs. speaking Which happens to be perfect trailer fodder. But I must say, the worst thing about The Minions is that they're influential. So many hackneyed animated films have basically pilfered The Minions formula because it's really easy! It is stupidly easy to do. Just take some small round things, clone them a bunch of times and have them spout gibberish for half the film. Anyone could do it! Not as well as The Minions, but they could do it. But that's not the only problem. A lot of great things in animation have had bad influences like, say, South Park. I've gone on and on about the terrible influence that South Park has had on many adult cartoons and Comedy Central trying to cash in on the South Park brand. The difference with The Minions is this: Have you ever seen a Minions clone actually work? Actually, let's change the question a little bit: Have you ever seen characters following The Minions formula that stood out, even a little bit? Characters that didn't make you immediately think that they're just ripping off The Minions? No, you probably haven't. I certainly haven't. It's always the same damn thing! Another thing about The Minions that bugs me is that they've allowed Illumination Pictures to thrive. I'm going to be honest: I don't like Illumination. Big surprise coming from an animation critic, but yeah. It's at a point where under no other circumstances would I actually watch an Illumination film. The reason is simple: I don't like the company. They lack artistic integrity, their business model is literally making animated films as cheaply as possible, and you could tell that just by looking at them! I Hate Everything already went into how certain animal models were repeated verbatim all over the film Sing, but Sing isn't the only Illumination film guilty of this. If I took a random background character from an Illumination movie, chances are you would not be able to tell me which movie they came from. I'm fairly sure that they use the same assets for all of their movies. Although, I will say making movies and animation profitable isn't a bad thing in and of itself. Obviously. You got to make money somehow. But when the only thing you focus on is the profit, bad things happen. You get the shitty flash cartoons of the 2000s, cash-ins like Cars 2, terrible cartoons from celebrities that clearly don't watch cartoons. Speaking of cash-ins, The Minions is my favorite type of cash-in: the give-the-comic-relief-their-own-spin-off cash-in. I think I went into plenty of detail about how this doesn't work in my Cars 2 review, but to recap: comic relief tends to work best in small doses. In movies like this, comic relief gets very over-saturated. Comic relief characters don't tend to have a lot of depth, so they have a very hard time carrying a story. Also, they have a very hard time pulling off serious plots, so these types of movies are all too often comedies. Which goes against the point of a comic relief character. As in, it's in the name, comic relief. As in, relief from the drama. If everything is comedy, you're not getting a relief from anything. The Minions movie takes all of these problems, escalates them, and adds in a few more. So, the Minions are these characters designed to grab your attention. What would happen if you just filled the screen with them? Oh, I don't know, 90% of their appeal would be muted. The other problem with making a film about the Minions is well... 'speaking' They don't talk! You want me to sum up most of the film's problems? The Minions do not talk! That's not technically true as the Minions speak in gibberish, but it's functionally true. Anytime that the Minions speak, amounts to basically dead air. I guess we should go over what dialogue is for in film. I know you learn this in like Day -7 of Storytelling School, but we should do a recap on the very, very basics. Dialogue can help establish character and character traits. So does "zaba-zoobie-banana" do this? No. It does not. This is why we need a narrator to essentially translate what the Minions just said. Narrator: 'For one minion had a plan. His name was Kevin. He was excited to share his idea with the tribe. He'd been preparing for days, weeks, months! '''Mr. Enter: '''Dialogue could also help move the story along, unless it's dialogue in the Minions movie. Here we need to have the narrator state exactly what we just saw to slow the story down. Dialogue could also be funny. And you know what, maybe "zaba-zoobie-banana" was funny the first time... '''Scientist: '''We've been working on this for a while. It's, uh, antigravity serum. '''Minion: 'gibberish '''Scientist: '''I meant to close that. He-he'll be alright, I'm sure. '''Mr. Enter: but after, I don't know, 29,000 times, it gets kind of old. Speaking of that narrator, you're subbing this thing wrong! You're supposed to talk immediately as things are said. When you wait until after the Minions say "zaba-zoobie-banana" and then tell us what they mean, it basically takes twice the time for the same amount of information to be conveyed. The smarter move, if you want a more cohesive story, is to use subtitles. But this movie is probably aimed at kids who can't read yet. And that's when you should figure out that these pieces do not go together! To tell you the very, very sad truth, silent films use dialogue better than this movie. Speaking of that, this movie tends to use the type of humor that you would find in silent films What you need to know about silent films is that very few of them are what we call feature-length, because the types of scenarios and humors that they establish wear out their welcome very quickly. I personally do like slapstick humor and I like surreal humor. But if that's your entire movie, it's going to get annoying very fast. And do you know how long it took this particular film to annoy me? 'sing' Universal theme Mr. Enter: 'Wow, just wow. Less than 1 second. This movie took literally less than 1 second to annoy me. That is impressive! holding on final note '''Mr. Enter: '''But let's get into the actual content of the movie and, uh, maybe they'll pull off something fantastic with all these things working against them. I mean, it actually starts with a very interesting philosophical lesson that has you thinking about your life as a whole. You see, Minions exist throughout the ages, completely undying. The Minions are eternal; they will always be there no matter what you accomplish during your lifetime, and they will be constantly destroying the world in which you live. In a way, being annoyed by the Minions unites all life on Earth; it brings us together as a species. Whether you're a caveman, an Egyptian Pharaoh, or Dracula. Dracu-what? Okay, so the Minions' shtick is that they try to help out the evilest being that they can find. And during the Middle Ages, a time when there were a lot of pretty evil people, they picked the one that didn't exist! Sure. Why not? So the Minions find themselves, well, minions for some of the evilest people in history. Scratch that, this is a kid's movie! So not really the evilest people in history, just the ''kid-friendliest evilest people in history! It might sound like nitpicking, but it's to point out that there's absolutely no reason that this movie should be a historical movie. It just doesn't work with the concept of the Minions at all. When you make a movie about characters trying to serve the evilest people in history and also try to make it a kid's movie, something is not going to mesh. You're going to leave something out, that's all I'm saying. Also, for some reason, the prologue of this movie is longer than the Fellowship of the Rings! At no less than 7 minutes, we're finally introduced to 1 of our main characters, Kevin. His character trait is that he has no character traits. I guess he's determined, at least in this scene. It-it vanishes before too long. He's joined by Bob. 'Narrator: '''Bob was eager to go, but Kevin felt it was just not strong enough for the dangerous journey ahead. '''Mr. Enter: '''This character dynamic also vanishes completely as the movie goes on. Our 3rd main character is Stuart. Stuart is a musician. Sometimes. There's a total of about 3 jokes in the entire movie that have anything to do with music. So between the 3 Minions, we've got about half a personality. This is quite the problem! '''Kevin: 'gibberish 'Bob: 'gibberish 'Kevin: 'gibberish 'Bob: 'gibberish '''Narrator: '''Eventually, Bob's energy and enthusiasm, but mostly lack of other volunteers, changed Kevin's mind. '''Mr. Enter: '''Yes. I know. I just saw that. Narration is supposed to be for things that the audience can't figure out for themselves. Luckily, after this scene, the narrator more or less vanishes completely. Okay, rule number 1 for a narrator: if you only use one at the beginning and the ending of your film, there's a very significant chance that you're using a narrator improperly. I don't know, I just find using a narrator only at the beginning of the film a very, very lazy way to establish tone or world or whatever. '''Bob: whimper Kevin: gibberish Bob: Okay, gibberish Kevin: gibberish 'Mr. Enter: '''You know, this could be really heartwarming if I knew what they were saying, but, because I don't, you know how this works. and Kevin's 'alternate' conversation '''Mr. Enter: '''Seriously, how do think the actual screenplay for this film looked? So, a lot of nothing happens, and I mean, a lot of nothing happens. Except for this. 'hijinx' on boat '''Mr. Enter: '''Well, at the very least, this movie comes with its own porn. Can't say that about many other films, can you? After all this, they finally make it to New York City, in the 1960s. Because if there's anything that kids of today love, it's pop-culture references from the 60s. Sure, I, as an adult, get that joke and things like the Beatles references that we'll be seeing, but considering how I feel about the rest of the movie, it really doesn't elevate anything for me. Especially because the references of the 60s that we get in this film, are all very surface-level jokes and references. Establishing a 60s setting with a Nixon joke like that, is like establishing a 50s setting with Mr. Sandman: it's been done before. And when the Minions get to the protests, it's just too sanitized. Yes, I understand that it's a kid's movie and depicting the actual protests as they actually happened, in the 60s, would be a stretch too far, but showing them ''at all is kind of confusing; some might even say that it's a touch disrespectful. The 60s was a tumultuous time; things were crazy back then! I don't think it's impossible to make a kid's film in a time period like the 1960s, but you need to ask yourself why ''this movie is taking place in the 60s and you need to be very, very mindful of the context considering what was going on in the 60s. And, spoiler alert, it wasn't happy hijinks and bright, smiling, yellow faces like the Minions want to present. The first thing the Minions do when they get to New York City, is find something more suitable to wear. So that's how the Minions got their iconic appearance: they found clothes on a clothesline. A human clothesline. With clothes that don't fit human anatomy at all! Makes perfect sense! Quick tip: when establishing backstory or background, ''no answer is infinitely better than a bad answer! Then we have a montage. This film has a lot of montages, because it's really hard to make a plot for characters who have no fucking personality and can't speak whatsoever. Eventually, Bob gets separated, so they chase him into a mall. And during this time, Bob comes to a room filled with mirrors. Which leads to a very, very weird scene. scene 'Mr. Enter: '''Bob thinks that they're all more Minions. He runs into them, then realizes that are just his reflection and looks at them sadly. This could have been a very touching scene, if Bob wasn't the one who was most excited and eager to leave. And also, this is only 10 minutes after they left their home! It's a little early to be feeling homesick. This is the kind of scene you're supposed to get like halfway through the movie or towards the end even. So it's not very dramatic. But don't worry, their attempts at comedy aren't much better than their attempts at drama. In the next scene, the Minions are watching a dating game show. They're invested because the contestants all have the same name as the Minions. I-I don't. Get. The joke. Maybe if the Minions we're watching looked more similar to the Minions on the television screen it would be a little bit funnier, but it's just people with the same name as the Minions. That-that's it. Then the picture dies. Through this television, they uncover a secret channel that tells them about a villain named Scarlet Overkill, who is going to be at a Villain-Con. You know, Villain-Con. Like Comic-Con. The first of which was in the 1970s! In all seriousness, I do not know why the filmmakers made this film in a historical setting. Historical settings take a ton of extra work and research, which they clearly didn't want to do! There's plenty of little inaccuracies throughout the entire damn film. And yeah, kids probably aren't going to notice, but, then again, kids probably aren't going to ''care that it takes place in the 60s! So, in essence, the people who would like this film for its 1960s aesthetic, would probably be disappointed by the flubs in its research. You don't tend to get these issues in Disney or Pixar films, when they take place in historical settings, because there's no reason not to fact-check your work! Unless, of course, you're just being lazy and trying to chase after a cheap buck. So the next aspect of this movie is the Minions trying to get to Orlando. Considering that it could have been reasonable for the Minions to just randomly stumble upon this Villain-Con -- after all, they randomly stumbled upon the commercial for it -- this entire sequence in New York City has been 100% pointless. It has done literally nothing for the plot. Unless, you're really interested in seeing Stuart make out with a fire hydrant. Part Two Category:Transcripts Category:Season 6